


bottles and butterflies

by doritoFace1q



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Butterfly Effect, Crack Treated Seriously, Episode: s10e03 Thin Ice, Temporal Paradox, Whatever Happened to Pete?, don't lie you've thought about this too, haha back to the future machine go brr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:42:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27171922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doritoFace1q/pseuds/doritoFace1q
Summary: “If I step on a butterfly,” Bill was saying, tugging at the front of her coat, “it could send ripples through time that mean I’m not even born in the first place, and I could just—” she flapped her hands, searching for a word, and the Doctor wanted to scream, “—disappear!”“Definitely,” he says, fists clenching behind his back. “I mean, that’s what happened to Pete.”
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	bottles and butterflies

**Author's Note:**

> yeah i don't know either

The Doctor was aware that, somewhere along the line, it had become almost a tradition for students to crash his seminars. Not that he minded, or cared (he was pretty sure he had a class list, but who was on it was a mystery to him; he’d picked the students by throwing darts).

Still, that was all it was: a curiosity, something for younger students to amuse themselves with and older students to nap in. It was rare for him to see the same interlopers more than once, almost unheard of for them to appear more than twice a year (though he suspected that might have had something to do with their ever-changing, ever-headache-inducing hairstyles).

On the last lesson, the one on the linguistics of sand crabs, he saw the pharmaceutical major with the big nose lean over and whisper something in the smiley girl’s ear.

Huh.

*

Nardole slammed the door shut before the Doctor had even finished waving the pair out. “You can’t do this.”

“What, teach students?” The Doctor held up his hands, looking around the room. “Doesn’t seem to be many other options, in a place like this. You know. A  _ university _ .” He spread his arms. “Place for teaching?”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it.” Nardole stepped forwards. It might even have been threatening, if his liver hadn’t creaked at the last second. “Your vow, sir.”

The Doctor groaned. “My vow, my vow, my  _ vow _ .” He threw himself against his desk. “I’m here, aren’t I?” He threw his arms out. “Here, on Earth. On the slow path. Seventy years, and I haven’t even gotten on a plane.”

“Blink of an eye,” said Nardole promptly.

The Doctor glared. “I’m not in the TARDIS, am I?” he rebuked. “Do you see me calling UNIT?”

“You’re restless,” said Nardole decisively, pointing at him. “And when you get restless, you—sneak off, oi!”

The Doctor waved his other hand absently as he shoved Nardole towards the door. “What would you even do with companions on Earth?” Nardole demanded, digging his heels into the carpet.

“Better company, for one,” said the Doctor before slamming the door in his face.

*

With Christmas came more disapproving looks from Nardole. Well, with Christmas  _ would _ have come more disapproving looks from Nardole, but the Doctor had dealt with that. The janitor could live without his closet for one day.

“And then,” said Bill, snickering over Pete’s groans, “he just spent the rest of the day complaining about it to me! Like I wasn’t the one who told him not to do it in the first place!”

“We were nine!” Pete protested. “What was I supposed to do, listen to you?”

“Sewers are fine places,” said the Doctor, picking up a biscuit and examining it under the light. “The people you meet there might not be the most pleasant, but the locations themselves are brilliant.”

“His foot got stuck in a gutter and he screamed for ten minutes,” said Bill.

“Never mind.”

Pete sniffed and peered beneath the desk. “Have we still got crackers?”

*

“What about Heather?”

Pete’s arm tightened around Bill’s shoulders and he glanced up, brow furrowed. The Doctor paused for only a second before throwing himself back at the console.

“Oh, she’ll be fine,” he said breezily, throwing a lever. The TARDIS jerked, and he gave the rotor a quick, consolatory pat. “A whole universe to see! And it’s not like anything would be able to touch her.”

“Think we’ll see her again?”

The Doctor hesitated. Bill pursed her lips.

“So,” said Pete loudly. “Bigger on the inside—is there a limit to that, or is it like Narnia?”

*

“God, it’s freezing!” Pete complained, stomping his feet on the ice.

“Wouldn’t be if you’d picked something warmer,” snipped Bill, slipping first out of the doors, then on the ice.

The Doctor straightened his cuffs and sniffed the air. “London,” he declared, stepping forwards. “1841.”

“You’re kidding.” Bill’s eyes widened and she whirled around.

“They had elephants in 1841?” asked Pete. Bill turned to give him an incredulous look and the Doctor raised an eyebrow. “In London, I mean,” he clarified. “On a river? On—” He made a flopping motion with his hand, then let it drop. “I’m going to stop talking, now.”

“Is Queen Victoria here?” asked Bill.

The Doctor shuddered.

*

“What, butterflies in the middle of winter?” Pete scoffed.

“Well, why not?” Bill protested.

“And I suppose you’ve stepped on plenty of butterflies, yeah?”

“Time,” the Doctor said loudly, “is not as simple as they show on TV, nor as complicated. An insect’s not going to cause the end of the universe.” He paused, then frowned. “Well. Most of the time.”

“I’m sorry?” Bill squeaked. Pete guffawed.

“Potts, check it out!” He kicked some snow over down over the edge, down onto the frozen river below. “Whoops. There goes grandma.” Bill kicked at him and he danced away, snickering. “Oh, damn—”

“Woah!” The Doctor yanked Bill out of the way as Pete crashed into a passing man. The man swore as the crate he’d been balancing on his shoulder tumbled to the ground with a  _ crash _ , bursting apart.

“Shit!” Pete dropped to his knees, scrambling at the bottles rolling every which way. “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry—”

The Doctor suddenly felt very, very dizzy. “Pete.” He tried to step forwards, but his feet wouldn’t move, not even to let him fall on his face. “Pete, wait—”

And then, all of a sudden, it wasn’t.

The ground was ripped away beneath his feet and the Doctor reeled. He was vaguely aware of his back hitting a bannister, which didn’t really hurt because it didn’t really happen, and he tasted bile, and blood from where he’d bitten his tongue. He could hear someone screaming (or was that him?), and he squeezed his eyes shut against the pressure building up behind them.

_ A man who on his way back from a delivery was meant to bump into a woman who would become his wife who would have his daughter who would have a son who would have a daughter who would have a son who would save a woman who would have a son who would be named Peter _ —

_ Pete _ , he tried to say.  _ Pete! _ He reached blindly out, fingers burning as the world was torn apart around them, as time turned inwards and spat itself out, as something fundamentally, irrevocably, ineradicable  _ changed _ —

_ A man who would be late to his delivery and leave in a huff, who would miss a woman by ten minutes and grow old with the daughter of his mother’s friend and raise a son who would never have children of his own _ .

Glass shattered beneath his feet.

There was nobody picking up bottles on the landing.

“If I step on a butterfly,” Bill was saying, tugging at the front of her coat, “it could send ripples through time that mean I’m not even born in the first place, and I could just—” she flapped her hands, searching for a word, and the Doctor wanted to scream, “—disappear!”

The Doctor dragged her to a stop. She turned to look at him, eyebrows raised expectantly, and the words died on his tongue.

Irreparably changed. Incontestably different. Existence that rippled rather than ebbed, that tasted faintly of oranges instead of cloves, a shift in the turn of the Earth that had never been off in the first place.

Bill, with her wide, curious eyes and frantic words and the empty space at her side and the slightest hint of  _ time _ clinging to her, staring up at him who never had and never would know a Peter Henry Owens.

“Definitely,” he says, fists clenching behind his back. “I mean, that’s what happened to Pete.”

Her eyebrows move, if possible, even higher. “Who’s Pete?”

**Author's Note:**

> my brain is a mess of bad ideas and dry oatmeal and i will make it everybody else's problem. i have [tumblr](https://doritoface1q.tumblr.com/).


End file.
